


Rest(lessness)

by ZScalantian



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: A character swearing who typically doesn't, Amnesia, Fisher Kingdom, Gen, Gratuitous scenery description, Insomnia, Mellower than indicated by the tags, Memory Leaks, Mentioned Eraqus (Kingdom Hearts), Mentioned Vanitas (Kingdom Hearts), Mentioned Xehanort (Kingdom Hearts), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, grieving process
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 14:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18896848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZScalantian/pseuds/ZScalantian
Summary: Aqua, Terra, and Ven post-KH3.  At home in the Land of Departure, rattling around inside the shells of their old lives.





	Rest(lessness)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snepiscool07](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snepiscool07/gifts).



Ven sits on the covered walkway that leads to the east towers, his feet dangling over a four-story drop. A mass of clouds on the horizon hides the rising moon, and his smarting eyes blur the brilliant sky above, nestling each star inside a spiny halo. His thoughts are bright with the fake clarity of insomnia. This is his fourth night awake. 

Honestly, he’s tried to sleep. He’s laid down in his comfortable bed, closed his eyes, counted his breaths, listened to the crickets shrilling outside. He gets tired - he still has the physical symptoms of exhaustion - he just doesn’t get sleepy. Twelve years in a magical coma’ll do that, he guesses.

There’s a wordless grumble from the back of his mind. Vanitas, by contrast, seems to be asleep almost all the time. He’s more lucid than Ven was while in Sora’s heart, but not much. Not enough to really talk. Ven's glad, since Vanitas is mostly a sadistic jerk.

He worries at a hangnail from yesterday’s sparring practice. He might be a jerk, but Vanitas has the right to an existence of his own. Ienzo and Even in Radiant Garden would make a replica body if asked. It’d be a win-win, right? Vanitas gets to exist as an individual and Ven gets the shadow cleared from his heart. 

The skin under the hangnail starts to sting. He drops his hands into his lap, balling them into fists, and draws his feet up. He’ll have to head inside soon. The smooth stone he’s sitting on leaches heat, the air’s cooling in a way that bodes of rain, and he didn’t bring a jacket. 

The thing is, even if Vanitas had a body of his own, he still wouldn’t be out of Ven’s hair. Xehanort and his plans are over with, but Vanitas is still a powerful and powerfully malicious keyblade wielder. Ventus really doesn’t want to be responsible for setting him loose on the worlds again. Or at least, not yet.

Vanitas insisted he was darkness? Okay, Ven could live with that. Darkness doesn’t _have_ to be awful. He doesn’t want to bring that point up too much around Aqua or Terra, who’ve suffered more from the darkness than he can even really wrap his head around, but he’s pretty sure of it. Bleedover from Sora’s adventures maybe, or just from his brief time hanging out with Riku before the silver-haired master took off with Kairi to go rescue Sora. (Ven, his heart closely linked with Sora’s, is on call to help with that, but they haven’t needed him yet. They told him to focus on recovering. _Bleh_. Like he needs to!) 

Maybe his certainty about the potential goodness of darkness is from his own lost memories. Meeting Chirithy again made them a little clearer. An ink wash or a mist instead of a fog. He had friends back then, even if he can’t really remember anything about them besides their existence. The point is, they left their marks on his heart, which had enough darkness in it to create Vanitas. And now Vanitas has formed a heart of his own - surely he can make positive connections with others too. He might not ever be a good person, but maybe he could be a better one.

Goosebumps prickle his arms. His long dreaming in a heartscape that looked and felt like a tropical paradise has worn away his tolerance for cold. He stands and shuffles along carefully, craning his head to see the hallway below, and balances over an arched window. He means to swing himself down through it, but as he turns on his heel, he slips. 

He’s falling. 

His mind blanks. Desperate, his sluggish limbs move on auto-pilot, reaching out. His left hand smacks onto the protruding lip of a windowsill, but his fingertips slide from the polished surface. The wind rushes in his ears, though the pounding of his heart nearly blots it out. He somersaults in free-fall, trying to remember Tinker Bell and Peter Pan teaching him to fly. He can get himself out of this, he just needs to think- A happy memory, that’s it! That’s easy. He can still feel the red earth under him, Terra’s arm around his shoulders and Aqua’s hand pressing on his back, all of them heedless of the way the dust sticks to the tears on their faces. His fall turns into a glide, and he sets himself down neatly on the broad step at the top of the long entry stairs, which glow luminously in the starlight. 

He flecks an imaginary dust speck from his shoulder armor. “Smooth recovery,” he compliments, and lets himself in. The massive doors swing without sound, and as he pushes them closed again, there’s a shuffling noise from the dim entry hall behind him. He turns - Aqua doesn’t sleep at night, she might have seen him fall and rushed down here to check on him - but freezes at the sight of the pale figure lurching across the floor. Lumpy, low to the ground, with indistinct features and a long dragging tail. Ven drops into a fighting stance, ready to summon his keyblade. What is it? Heartless, Unversed? From its wan color and uneven movements, maybe a Nobody? 

The apparition weaves its unsteady way towards the staircase leading to the great hall. From there, it can get to either the East or West wings of the house, and Ven fills with panic at the notion of it creeping up on his unsuspecting, at-rest friends. His keyblade appears with a flash of light. He’s drawing back to pitch a Strike Raid when the monster bumps into the bottom step and reels back with a bubbling cry of surprise. “Aaahh!”

The tension drains out of Ventus. He drops his arm and dismisses his keyblade, crossing the hall to the creature, and hefts a heavily quilted blanket from the base of the stairs. Chirithy, both of his tiny grey paws rubbing his forehead, blinks embroidered blue eyes up at him. “Oh, Ven! You’re back in already!”

A grin blooms on Ven’s face. “What were you doing?”

“Well, you see,” the tiny paws reach out and hold up a corner of the fabric, “I knew you were outside and I thought you might be cold, so I decided to bring you a blanket.”

“Thanks, Chirithy.” Ven‘s smile shifts from amused to fond as he bundles the blanket under one arm. He doesn’t remember how he actually knows Chirithy, but from the moment the Spirit peeked around a pillar at Master Eraqus’ wake, Ven’s adored him. Like they’re old friends who finally get to see each other after a long time apart. Chirithy clearly adores him in the same way. The Dream Eater only stopped following him from room to room a week ago. 

They must’ve met back in the misty times he can’t remember. Ven’s asked questions, but Chirithy can’t or won’t talk about whatever happened back then. Sometimes he merely shakes his head. Sometimes he starts to talk then slaps his paws over his mouth, looking at Ven with regretful eyes. Ven doesn’t like upsetting him, so he’s stopped asking.

The Dream Eater’s presence alone makes it clear that Ven has a past of some significance. He didn’t just pop out of the air at twelve years old, though he knows some people who did.

“Um…” says a small voice. Ven stops woolgathering. Chirithy shuffles his feet shyly. “Can you come help me in the library? The books on the higher shelves are too heavy for me.”

“Sure.”

The library’s lights are on, glinting on leather bindings and the gilded shelves, but neither Aqua or Terra are around. He looks with interest at the books Chirithy points for him to get. It’s a mix of treatises and essay collections, handwritten diaries and hefty hardcover tomes. Their subjects are equally mixed: books about the nature of the keyblade and its history, about hearts or worlds or illusions or memory. There’s one weird one about something called “worldlines”. Some are stuff that Terra and Aqua studied, but Ven hasn’t gotten to any of them yet. 

While Chirithy fusses, laying them out just so on a round oak table, Ven drags an overstuffed chair over and sits, leaving the bundled blanket balanced on the chair back. He reads over Chirithy’s shoulder for a few minutes, but the cramped text swims in front of his eyes. He closes them and leans back. Do his friends from back then also have amnesia? There’s a lot of worlds, and he’s only been to a handful. Even if he crossed paths with them by chance, would they have any way of knowing each other?

He thinks they would. If your hearts are linked, then it doesn’t matter how far apart you are, or what comes between you. You don’t forget, way down deep.

After a while, Ven starts to snore quietly. One of Chirithy’s soft grey ears twitches and he looks up from his current book. Shaking his head, he toddles across the table and leaps to the chair. He tugs the blanket down, folds it around the sleeping boy, then cuddles up next to him, embroidered eyes closing.

 

 

Terra taps the bathroom light on and stares at the mirror. Mussed hair, wild eyes, covered in cold sweat, but… skin still light brown, hair still dark brown, eyes still dark blue. Human. Himself. He sags and lets out a deep sigh. 

At the marble sink, he splashes his face with cold water. He realized he’d get nightmares. Locking his own heart then spending eleven years trapped without senses in the company of his most hated enemy and the shade of his own departed master… that seemed like a recipe for night sweats, even at the time. He didn’t count on a bunch of nightmares he doesn’t know the context for. 

He sinks his fingers into the thick towel he dries off with, relishing the texture, before tossing it aside back in his room. Once he peels back the long lace curtains over the window, the view outside is a deep blue-grey, and a gentle rain patters down. Every plant in the Land of Departure is bursting with life right now, making a riot of colors and scents. He guesses they’ll be glad for this downpour.

He’s less glad. It means he can’t go sit on the big entry staircase, always his favored spot for thinking (brooding, Aqua says). He can’t go out to the training grounds. The simplicity of physical activity is comforting. Move like this or like that, strike those targets, practice this spell - the choices are a lot easier than grappling with night terrors caused by half- or barely-remembered lives.

He’s not falling asleep again tonight, so he gets dressed. His boots he leaves wherever they are, padding out into the hallway barefoot. There’s no light under Aqua’ or Ven’s doors, but he doubts either of them are in there sleeping. As he walks, he keeps one hand outstretched, fingertips tingling across the wood paneling. He ignores the way the walls change in his peripheral vision, from creamy carved stone to smooth, luminous silver-grey or pillars of alabaster white.

The leftovers from last night’s dinner - grilled rice, grilled fish, pickled vegetables - serve as breakfast. He does last night’s dishes too, listening to the clinking of plates and the swish of water, swirling the foaming soap into airy shapes that collapse in seconds. Aside from him, the Castle - he shakes his head and corrects himself, the _house_ seems utterly quiet. It never felt empty when they lived here before. Now that it’s just the three of them, they seem to rattle around like extra dice left in a Command Board box.

Leaving the dishes to dry, he sets out in search of company. The windows are letting in more light than he expects. Either it’s later than he thinks, the rain’s clearing, or both. 

Ven is in the library beside a table scattered with books, slumped in a high-backed chair with Chirithy curled in his lap. In sleep, Ven’s breathing is deep and even; Chirithy makes small burbly sounds. Terra stands looking down at them for a long beat. He and Aqua hadn’t been sure of what to make of the diminutive creature when it first arrived. They reached out to Yen Sid, who replied that as a Spirit Dream Eater, Chirithy was a positive and beneficent being who offered little risk and much benefit.

With a Dream Eater guarding his sleep, Ven probably doesn’t have nightmares. Terra tucks the blanket in more neatly and leaves before he gets jealous. 

His footsteps are quick along high-ceilinged passages, up and down banks of stairs, fingers skimming across the walls. There’s a pink blush flowing in from the windows now. From the corners of his eyes, he sees sheer cliffs of red stone.

Aqua, when he finally finds her, is in the far Eastern tower, in Master Eraqus’ suite. The jeweled door is open, and through the sitting room he can see her on the floor of the bedroom, surrounded by tidy stacks of paper. 

They’ve been going through the Master’s effects. As kids, he and Aqua used to dare each other to sneak in here. Although he’s been in and out a dozen times over the last weeks, he still feels a frisson of disobedience every time he steps over the threshold.

“Aqua.”

She twists around in a fluid motion, halfway to her feet before she sees it’s him. If she was startled by the sudden noise, he is startled to see the tears caught in her eyelashes. 

“What is it?!”“You surprised me!” They speak at the same moment, then take a beat to disentangle the conversational thread.

“Sorry,” he offers. Aqua scrubs at her eyes with the heel of her hand, folding her legs and dropping gracefully to a seat.

“No, I’m sorry. It’s…” She gestures at the papers. They’re all handwritten, in a cramped, neat script, and many have sealing wax on the edges. “The Master saved all the letters Xehanort wro-.”

Her voice suddenly vanishes. For an infinite moment, all Terra sees is the dark closed-eyelids red of desert nights, all he smells or feels or tastes is metal baking in the sun, hears only the hollow groan of wind through armor. He reaches out blindly until his groping hand catches the stem of a wall lamp. He shoves the rage aside, focusing on the cool metal under his fingers and the wooden floor under his feet. He can hear her again.

“-alright? Can you hear me?”

He swallows. “Yes,” and he’s relieved when the voice that comes out is his own. He rubs a hand across his mouth. He’s relieved he can speak at all.

Her face is soft with concern. “Same old?”

“Same old. Tell me why you were crying.”

She hesitates, then picks up a passel of letters like she’s holding rotten fruit. “You’re sure…?”

He nods and sits down cross-legged across from her. When it comes up suddenly, the hatred is disorienting. When he’s prepared, it can be packed away easily, like it exists separately from him to begin with. “Show me.”

Her mouth thins, but she nods and fans out the papers. “The first ones are from when he was younger than we are. There’s so many of them, and they’re so friendly and excited and, and _affectionate!_ ” Her face twists in disgusted disbelief. “Then they get pompous, then they start arguing and they’re less frequent. Then there’s not any for years, and then there’s _this_ -” she hisses as she draws up a letter sitting by itself. If anger could combust, the paper would be ashes.

She offers it to him, but he shakes his head. She drops it back to its spot like a live coal, her hands clenching into fists. “The Master invited him to our Ascension Ceremony. And that bastard is so faux-apologetic, so fakely grateful, I can’t believe the Master didn’t see through it. He calls Ven a ‘burden’, he talks about the Unversed like he’s got nothing to do with them, he tells the Master he’s _concerned_ about you! He’s the reason we even had to take the Exam to begin with! He sabotaged you from the start!” Her voice rasps angrily. 

He reaches over the letters to touch the back of her hand. She flinches, then turns her hand over to take his. “It seems weird,” he says, “that I’m staying calmer about this than you are.”

“I’m mad for your sake,” she mutters. 

“Thanks.” He threads their fingers together while he thinks. Slowly, he says, “I guess that, because I had to spend so much time with him, none of this is surprising. He had a real need to pontificate, you know. I think I heard nearly all his theories and most of his back-up plans at one point or another.” He laughs shortly. “The perfect captive audience.”

She doesn’t laugh. “That’s awful.”

He can’t help a crooked smile. “It was better than the times we weren’t speaking. We went a couple years once. By the end, I thought we were both gonna lose it entirely.”

“You’re not making me less angry at him.”

“I don’t want you to be less angry.” It’s pointless to say that he doesn’t want Master Xehanort to be a part of their lives anymore. The old man did too much damage to them, of course his ghost is going to linger. And he doesn’t think that Aqua, trying to survive in the Realm of Darkness, ever had much time to process her anger at him.

Terra did. His hate is old, like dried, clotted blood, a loosened scab that hasn’t dropped off yet. It’s his anger at the Keyblade Graveyard, wrathful over the harm done his family, not the tempered, grudging understanding he arrived at over twelve years. He doesn’t need to read the letters. He already knows that once upon a time, Xehanort was a kind and decent person worthy of Eraqus’ love. That his brilliance and curiosity were warped to sadism and arrogance by the certainty that he was wise, that he saw further, that he was _doing the right thing._

He can’t muster fresh anger at Master Xehanort now that he knows him so well, but it’s probably healthy for Aqua that she can.

He taps his fingers against hers. “You want to forget all this and go spar for a while?”

They hike up to the training ground. The birds are in full chorus, swaying on the flowering vines that wrap around pillars and fluttering from twisted oaks and pines to nab the worms that came up overnight. They’re so intent on their business that he and Aqua nearly walk over them before they fly away. The grass is coated with silver droplets, staining the hems of his hakama dark, beading on Aqua’s tights, and running down her silver boots. He’s still barefoot and the cold mud squishes between his toes. They warm up first, stretching and moving through preset forms. When they face off, Aqua is battle-honed and hair-triggered, though she makes an effort to slow down for him. He goes as fast as he can without tripping up on his conflicting muscle memories. She wins every round, and they go until they’re both sweating and leaning on their keyblades for support.

 

 

Aqua sends a burst of Crawling Fire over the stone bench, evaporating the last moisture, then collapses onto it, dismissing Stormfell. “Good, good effort,” she gasps.

Terra groans, on one knee in the short grass. “Thanks.” Earthshaker is planted solidly in the ground beside him, and his right hand wraps around its hilt, holding himself up. “I think you only put me on my back twenty times instead of fifty.” 

He’s filthy, soaked from head to toe and spattered with dark mud, but she’s in only slightly better shape. “We’re both a mess,” she admits. 

“In more ways than one.” He laughs with bleak humor and pushes himself to his feet. “I need a shower.”

Aqua casts an exhausted eye on the white towers anchored with golden chains on the hills across from them. It’s a long walk back to the house. “You go ahead,” she murmurs, stifling a yawn. 

He shakes his head and starts trudging away. “Don’t fall asleep out here. You’ll wake up as a mud monster.”

“I’ll be alright,” she says, flicking her wrist to summon a fountaining jet of blue water above her. A useful spell in the Dark World, where she couldn’t trust the water as safe to drink or bathe in. She raises her arms and turns her face up, letting it sluice down. She’s not clean _clean_ , but it washes the mud off. She finishes with a bubble of fire hot enough and close enough to dry her, but too brief to do any damage.

That’s the last of her energy, and she flops onto her side, drawing her knees up. The stone under her bare shoulder is pleasantly cool, and she rests her head on it. She can’t sleep at night, even with a light left on in her room. Every little noise, every twitch of her drowsy muscles sends her up in a panic, looking for the gleaming eyes of Heartless. She usually summons a keyblade too. Embarrassingly, it tends to be Master Keeper that appears, not her own Stormfell, and she has to stealthily re-place it where it stands not twenty feet from where she’s currently lying, as a monument to Master Eraqus’ memory. She and the boys put fresh flowers on it every few days. If they’ve noticed the earth around it is still bare, the grass not growing up to it, they haven’t said a word about it.

Everywhere else, things are growing at an astounding rate. There are gloriously fragrant drifts of flowers in pink, purple, red, and white. The pines, oaks, and maples have put out tiny florets, and bees swarm from them to the wild roses that wind up the stonework. Orchids cling to every possible foothold on the granite pinnacles. Poppies and buttercups stud the grass like jewels, and she stretches a hand to touch one growing close below. 

The Land seems… happy to have them back. Happy to have been returned from hibernation. Celebratory. She wonders if this is something Master Eraqus never had time to tell her about being the Successor, that the Land has moods and she has a feel for them. 

The sun beams down warmly. Her eyes are getting heavy, and she can feel herself relaxing. She’ll take a little nap…

“Aqua!” 

She leaps to her feet, a Barrier shimmering up around her, keyblade appearing in a flurry of petals. The birdsong and sunlight stun her, and she blinks, half-blind, gasping. The air smells like flowers and drying earth. Ven stands behind the bench. He’s already taken a cautionary step back, with his hands open before him to show he’s harmless. His eyebrows are drawn down with concern over sky-blue eyes, not gold. He’s awake and he’s real. She’s not hallucinating. She’s in the Realm of Light, back home in the Land of Departure.

She laughs, embarrassed, and drops the barrier. It takes a little more willpower to vanish her keyblade - Stormfell this time, thankfully - but she lets it go too. “Sorry.” The apology is becoming too familiar. 

“My fault,” he says. “I should’ve warned you.” The reassurance rings hollow. If there’s a way to catch her attention that doesn’t provoke her into fight-or-flight mode, they haven’t found it yet. 

“What’s up?”

His hands drop. “I-” He stops and looks down, mouth twisting. He rubs the back of his neck and starts again. “I have kind of a serious question to ask you. Well, you and Terra. And I want Chirithy to hear it too.” 

“Oh? Should we go back to the house?”

He nods, so she stands and stretches. Shading her eyes, she looks at the sun’s position to estimate how long she slept. Three hours or so, not bad. She’d like to sneak in one more nap before it gets dark, but she can keep going if that doesn’t work out.

A quarter of the way down the winding path, they spot Terra and Chirithy. The Dream Eater’s short legs mean he scurries to keep up with Terra’s long strides, even though Terra doesn’t walk that quickly. Ven scoots instantly to the edge of the path, waving his arm. “Heeey! Up here!”

With sparkles of violet light, Chirithy vanishes and reappears beside them. “Ven!” he chirps. The boy holds his arms out and the Spirit leaps into them. Terra says something indistinguishable down below. She watches as he calls up his keyblade glider. The glittering craft shoots into the sky, then banks down to land next to them. Its rider grins as he dismounts. Barefoot still, Aqua notes.

“If he doesn’t have to walk that whole way, I shouldn’t have to either.” 

Ven nods, chucking Chirithy under the chin. “Seems fair.”

Since they’re all here, they simply head back up to the training ground and the stone bench. Terra and Aqua sit with Chirithy between them, while Ventus stands before them, rocking back and forth on his feet like he’s about to deliver an oral report in class. “I’ve been thinking lately.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” jokes Terra. Ven squawks and pretend-punches him, and the older boy winces in mock pain. 

“I’m serious, here!” Ven shakes his head, getting back on track, and his grin fades. “I’ve been _thinking_ that it might be good for me to travel a little.”

The statement chills Aqua. Ven wants to leave?

“I want to see if I can recover any more memories. Maybe I’ll find my friends from back then, or the world I originally came from! And I want to see how our friends in the different worlds are doing.” He paces, carried away by the sweep of his own words. Swept out to sea, Aqua thinks, away from the safety of shore. Riptide. Terra is leaning forward intently, but paralysis has set into her muscles, and she can’t even unclench her jaw to speak a word of warning.

“It’ll be good for Vanitas too, I bet. You know I can’t let him loose like he is, and there’s got to be something out there that’ll help.”

“I’ll go with you,” Terra says suddenly. Aqua was chilled before. Now she freezes right through.

Ven’s face lights up. “Really?!”

“Yeah.” He turns to her, craning his head a bit to meet her eyes. She stares back steadily. The only muscle in her body that seems capable of moving is the one jumping in her jaw. “I’ll stay and help with the last of the Master’s things, but then…” He makes a vague gesture towards his head and chest. “There’s too many echoes. I don’t know if leaving will do any good, but staying here isn’t helping either.”

Her lungs seem rusted, but she squeezes some sound out of them. “I don’t want you to go,” she whispers. They’re all home, they’re together again, how can they leave?

“Come with us,” urges Ven. Terra sets his hand on hers. Against her icy fingers, his skin feels like fire.

She breaks eye contact and tugs her hand away. “Let me think about it.” 

“Please, Aqua,” Ven begs, and her heart breaks. Terra stands, setting a quelling hand on his shoulder.

“Let her be.” He turns to Aqua. “Right now, do you want us around or not?”

The whole essential point of the issue is that she wants them around always, but she shakes her head. It will be easier to think this through alone. They leave, Terra solemn, Ventus slumped with disappointment and guilt. As they walk away, the urge to call after them strikes. _I’ll go with you, just don’t leave me again._ She bites her tongue and swallows the impulse. Fear can’t dictate this decision for her. 

With surprise, she realizes that Chirithy hasn’t moved. “Um, Master Aqua?”

She forces a smile. “Shouldn’t you be with Ven?”

“I’ll go.” Its cutesy demeanor is more serious than usual. “I wanted to apologize first.” The Dream Eater pushes itself off the bench, clasps its paws together, and bows deeply. “I’m sorry I can’t do anything to help your nightmares. I’m connected to Ven, but I thought maybe I could fight for you too.” The bow gets deeper, the tubby plush body folded nearly in half. “Your nightmares are too strong for me, so I’m sorry.”

She nearly laughs. So her nightmares overpower even a creature that eats Nightmares for breakfast, huh? That’s not encouraging. Instead, she lets her smile become a genuine one. 

She pets the bowed head gently. Like a cat, the Spirit leans into it. “Thank you, Chirithy. It means a lot that you tried, but the best thing you can do for me is keep looking after Ven.”

The Spirit pops up and thumps its small chest, “Leave it to me!”, and vanishes.

Aqua pries herself off the bench. She feels that she could easily grow roots and stay seated on the stone forever. She looks up at the granite peak behind her. Tiny spots bare of plant life seem to glitter, marking the places where she can use Doubleflight to propel herself to the top. 

Once up, she looks out over the Land. The house is set on the largest outcropping, but spires of stone stretch on for miles all around. Streams overhung with ferns run through the valleys between them. She can hear thrushes and larks, the chattering of squirrels, and the distant screaming call of peacocks. If she squints, she can make out red-furred deer on other hills, moving shyly between the trees.

She loves it here. In the Realm of Darkness, she dreaded the day she would come across immense links of golden chain, pieces of moss-covered grey granite, spear-like gilded finials, or round stained glass windows floating in the void, and know that her defensive measures had failed and the Land of Departure had fallen. 

But deep as her love is, as glad as she was to restore her home and take up residence again, she loves her boys infinitely more. She’s tired of wandering, of fighting, but she never wants to separate from them again. Ventus was restless even before all of this, chafing at Master Eraqus’ restrictions and wanting to follow her and Terra on their training missions off-world. There really is no hope of keeping him here now that he’s had a taste of freedom.

And Terra is undeniably a man haunted. He moves very carefully, perpetually ready for the memories lurking in the locked rooms of his mind to suddenly reorient the landscape around him. She’s even less sure than he is that leaving will help him find his mental feet again, but watching him creep around the house’s familiar halls does none of them any good.

It’s in this frame of mind that she returns to the house. They’re both in the Great Hall, Ven pacing back and forth with Chirithy following his steps, and Terra leaning with arms crossed against the balcony by the rose window. They snap to focus as they see her. She draws herself up, the three thrones behind her, and squares off against her fears.

“I want to come back sometimes. I have responsibilities I can’t leave unattended, and the Land can’t be left unguarded too long.”

They’re grinning, open-mouthed. “You mean -?!” Ven cries.

She smiles. “Let’s all go together.”

**Author's Note:**

> Seeing that my assignee was into the Persona game series, I thought to myself, "I know three things about Persona: Hiimdaisy's comics, there's a bunch of sad teens, a snarky cat, and at least one robot-girl, and it involves a boatload of Tarot symbolism. Hmm, I like Tarot as a writing motif, I could work with this." I set out to write Major Arcana themed drabbles for the requested characters, but one of the vignettes kept wanting to sprawl. Eventually, I let it. It's not really Tarot themed anymore, but some of the symbolism lingered. 
> 
> Snepiscool07, I hope you enjoy.


End file.
